Mark Leuchter, «'Why Tarry The Wheels of his Chariot?' (Judg 5,28): Canaanite Chariots and Echoes of Egypt in the Song of Deborah.», Vol. 91 (2010) 256-268

The closing verses of the Song of Deborah include a curious reference to chariotry (Judg 5,28) at a rhetorically potent moment in the poem. The present study examines the implications of the use of this image against the mythopoeic impulses in the poem, the larger historical background of early Israel's confrontations with Canaanite aggression in the 12th century BCE and the memory of Egyptian strategies of hegemony from the late Bronze Age. The effects of these memories and experiences leave profound impressions in the social and mythic matrices embedded in a broad spectrum of Biblical traditions.

262 MARK LEUCHTER
imperial system still resonating in public consciousness among the
populations that settled the highlands, associations between Egypt
and the urban Canaanite elites of the lowland would have been
inevitable, especially if elements of the latter (such as Sisera)
engaged in acts to subdue the former (highland Israel). Indeed, other
Biblical texts preserve this equivalency and express it in later
legislative language. For example, the equation of Canaanite and
Egyptian culture underlies Lev 18,1-2 :
And YHWH spoke unto Moses, saying: Speak unto the children of
Israel, and say unto them: I am YHWH your God. After the doings
of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the
doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do;
neither shall ye walk in their statutes.
This passage is part of a law code that repeatedly reaches back
into early Israelite experience, and bears witness to the depth of
the Egypt-Canaan association in national memory 16. The phrase
â€œ their statutesâ€ applies to both Egypt and Canaan â€” they are
placed in semantic parallel to each other, and in opposition to
YHWHâ€™S laws. The aforementioned passage from Leviticus carries
forward an impulse underlying Judg 5,28 and its emphasis on
Siseraâ€™s chariot: for the poet, the lowland Canaanites whose
culture was so deeply shaped by Egyptian hegemony had adopted
their machinery of military conquest 17.
Lev 18 is widely regarded as part of the Holiness Code, the origins of
16
which should be identified with the reign of Hezekiah in the late 8th century
BCE, following the implications of I. KNOHL, The Sanctuary of Silence. The
Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis, MN 1995) 200-224. The
final form of the Holiness Code, however, should be seen as the product of the
Babylonian exile, a time that saw antique intellectual topoi deployed in the
service of legal polemics; see M. LEUCHTER, â€œThe Manumission Laws in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy: The Jeremiah Connectionâ€, JBL 127 (2008)
635-653. Regardless of when one chooses to date the Holiness legislation, the
p e r i o d of the late 8th c e n t u r y through the mid 6th c e n t u r y witnesses a
resuscitation of ancient tropes in a variety of literary contexts, ranging from the
redaction of early wisdom sayings in Hezekiahâ€™s time (Prov 25,1) to the exilic
prophet Ezekiel recalling the indigenous origins of Israel in the time before the
mature emergence of the tribal league (Ezek 16,3). The author of Lev 18, then,
would have lived at a time when the intellectual elite of Israel were well aware
of the oldest traditions upon which later conceptual edifices were constructed.
A similar sentiment is implied in Samuelâ€™s denunciation of kingship
17
found in 1 Sam 8,11, where chariotry is identified as a hallmark of abusive